(Geneva, November 10, 2026) – United Nations members urged Tajikistan throughout its periodic United Nations peer evaluation on November 5, 2026, to take pressing motion to guard human rights within the nation and finish repression towards authorities opponents.
Member nations known as for the discharge of journalists, attorneys and civil society activists from illegal detention, for freedom of speech, for motion to deal with gender-based violence, and for accountability for violent crackdowns within the nation’s Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous area.
“Tajikistan has openly flouted United Nations peer review recommendations to the detriment of its people’s human rights and freedoms,” mentioned Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Tajikistan should use this opportunity to take the advice of its peers and end its systematic human rights abuses.”
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council by which member nations evaluation different nations’ human rights data each 4 and a half years and situation suggestions to deal with considerations. In Tajikistan’s 2021 evaluation, the federal government accepted 172 out of the 234 suggestions and famous 62 of the others. But the federal government has didn’t implement key suggestions and human rights circumstances have worsened sharply since 2021, Human Rights Watch mentioned.Â
Member states praised Tajikistan for ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopting a National Strategy for Protection of Human Rights till 2038, and passing a Law on the Equality and Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination in 2022.
However, a number of nations expressed alarm on the worsening human rights scenario in Tajikistan. Germany famous that it “remains concerned about repression against civil society, journalists, human rights defenders, religious organizations, and the political opposition, including through torture and lack of judicial independence.” Countries urged Tajikistan to finish reprisals towards opposition figures, nongovernmental organizations, activists, and journalists; to guard freedom of expression and media freedom; to abolish the dying penalty; and to ascertain mechanisms to stop torture and unwell remedy.
Several nations, together with Brazil, France and the Netherlands urged Tajikistan to conduct thorough investigations into the 2021-2022 occasions in Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous area. France known as for an “independent, impartial, and transparent investigation of deaths of civilians and allegations of human rights violations in Badakhshan.” In May 2022, police reportedly killed as much as 40 individuals within the autonomous area throughout so-called safety operations.
The police additionally reportedly arbitrarily detained and tortured greater than 200 protesters, together with  205 residents of the area who had been sentenced to jail in closed trials in 2021 and 2022.
More than a dozen UN member states urged Tajikistan to uphold its commitments to permit civil society organizations to function unhindered. In this context Estonia, Poland, Portugal, and Ukraine known as on Tajikistan to deliver its counter terrorism laws into line with worldwide human rights requirements. Poland said that “overly broad definitions of the terrorist threats and extremist phenomenon may lead to disproportionate restrictions on human rights”.
Tajikistan has been dismantling the foundations of impartial civil society since its final UPR. After closing down greater than 500 nongovernmental organizations in 2022, Tajik authorities introduced the closure of one other 239 organizations within the first half of 2023, both by way of court docket selections or as a result of they had been compelled to self-liquidate.
While some nations welcomed Tajikistan’s latest progress on girls’s rights, different nations urged Tajikistan to deal with widespread gender-based violence. Belgium, Chile, Iceland, Switzerland, and the UK mentioned that Tajikistan ought to criminalize gender-based and home violence. Several nations additionally advisable eliminating little one, early and compelled marriages. Estonia, which urged the federal government to “introduce a consent based definition of rape in its legal code”, was one in every of numerous states that known as on Tajikistan to deliver its rape laws into line with worldwide requirements.
Several nations, together with Chile, Japan and Ukraine known as on Tajikistan to strengthen protections towards enforced disappearance whereas Lithuania urged it to finish transnational repression. Transnational repression by the Tajik authorities has concerned enforced disappearances, illegal renditions, abusive use of Interpol Red Notices, and harassment of members of the family in Tajikistan of opponents in exile.
In October 2026, Tajikistan’s decrease chamber of parliament authorized a choice to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is able to take impact one yr after the formal UN notification to the UN secretary-general. Several nations urged Tajikistan to rethink. ICC judges present in March 2026 that as an ICC member nation, Tajikistan didn’t adjust to its obligation to arrest and give up Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was below an ICC arrest warrant, throughout his go to in October 2025 and referred the matter to the court docket’s Assembly of States Parties for additional motion.
“Tajikistan told UN members during the review that it is fully committed to international human rights standards, but it has not demonstrated its commitment,” Williamson mentioned. “Its credibility on the international stage would increase if it turns words into actions with specific steps to end rights abuses by state authorities and promote basic freedoms.”
Source: Human Rights Watch